


Fire

by enoughiamagod



Series: More matter, with less art [1]
Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: an attempt to understand and explain, first person fic sorry sorry sorry, gertrude's story, plot heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 22:08:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2126331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enoughiamagod/pseuds/enoughiamagod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudius has come home for the first time in fifteen years.<br/>Gertrude gives the backstory on life at the court of the King and Queen of Denmark up until that point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire

**Author's Note:**

> The first in a series inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet. I am doing a lot of research to try and make this as accurate as possible, but I can't promise anything.   
> Thank you.

Claudius arrived at court today, after fifteen years away.

 

He was the younger brother, the King’s swordsman, as they called him in those day. He’d been on campaign the last fifteen years, winning territories and respect even as whispers arose about the kind of man he was. They said he was hard, angry, that something had burnt up the man in him and left a machine.

They said his name, _crippled,_ was accurate, for his soul was not whole.

* * *

 

Perhaps I alone knew the full reason, though I suspected my husband did as well. I shall start at the beginning, though, so that if I am to be judged, it will be with all the facts that I have laid out here.

 

I was born to a young noble couple of the court. My father and mother were both expats of some foreign nation, where they held royal standing, but here they were only high ranking nobles. I can only assume they valued their life over their titles, and they seemed happy enough at court. I was raised alongside the twin princes. My early life is unremarkable, the typical life of a young lady being groomed for an advantageous match. I left my studies with the princes at the age of fifteen, and was schooled in all that a woman may need to know.

It happened that at court there was a tradition that young people would take an older lover, one who was experienced in certain arts. Parents would arrange this with the parents of the betrothed, so that the style of love one learned was similar to the style the future spouse learned, to ensure that the bedroom, at least, would be a compatible place for the couple.

We have, of course, seen this custom fall to the wayside, but when we were young it was perfectly normal and it was all arranged just so, and so I began my instructions in the art of love.

* * *

 

At this time I fancied myself in love with the son of the King’s advisor, Polonius, who at the time was a dashing young man with dancing eyes and good cheer, and all the ladies of court loved him. We had flirted a few times, and he had made serious intentions of speaking to my father. As I was not a princess in this country but a lady, I thought that perhaps it might be allowed, but these hopes were false ones.  I was disappointed when my betrothal was not to him, but to Claudius, but I was resolved to do my duty.

 

Claudius, however, was not. He was in love with a duke’s daughter, a pretty little thing with no connections, and while he knew that such a match, in theory, was possible, he also knew it was unlikely. Yet he desired it, and pushed for it.

 

The afternoon we met to formalize our engagement, he was civil, yet reserved, and I knew he did not like me as well as his lady.

His hand was rough as he slipped the ring onto my finger, the hands of a man who had seen hard work, and I was surprised. It must have shown on my face, for his lips twitched.

“Don’t look so astonished,” he whispered, amused. “Surely you know what I’m destined for?”

I inclined my head, an acknowledgement that I did.

“You, too, lady,” he said, and this time lady sounded like an insult, so I did not answer. I slipped the ring onto his hand, and we, Prince Claudius of Denmark and I, were engaged to be wed.

 

The Queen and King decided on a double wedding, and so Claudius’s brother Hamlet sent for his bride, a Finnish princess with gorgeous red hair and pale skin. She was lovely, and she arrived in a timely manner, and they too repeated the engagement banns, and our wedding dates were fixed for six months from that day.

 

Hamlet and his princess seemed quite enamored of each other. They enjoyed spending time at the seashore, and on the lake. They went riding, and strolled arm in arm, and at dinner laughed and talked.

Claudius and I got along no less well. Though there was little love between us at first, we enjoyed discussing politics and arguing over ideas, as well as dancing and drinking.  It was a sunny afternoon when he looked at me and I knew that love had grown between us. We were very well suited, I must say, and we may have found great happiness in our marriage had it not been for the Finnish princess.

 

She developed a cough, then she could not hold down food, and on the fifth day she died.

 

Of course the King sent for another daughter, but the only one they had was eight, and they could not wait. Her untimely death had unravelled the only alliance possible- except for me.

 

So I became the bride. My blood was noble enough, and though my parents were not exactly welcome in their country, the blood tie would be honored.

 

My engagement with Claudius was cancelled, and Hamlet and I became engaged. With the wedding only two months away, there was no time to find a bride for Claudius, and it seemed he would be able to marry his little duchess after all.

 

He asked instead to be appointed an officer in the army, and left a week before our wedding.

* * *

 

I did not find out until later that the duchess was three months pregnant with the child of Polonius, and that they had been secretly wed the last few years.

* * *

 

Hamlet and I were not so well suited. Our instructions in the arts of love had been different, and he was more reserved and cool than his brother, and I found it hard to connect. He was harder to love than his brother, for he and I had very few ideas in common. He did not make much effort to bond with me, and I took it that his heart was still broken over the loss of his bride.

 

Our wedding day came and went, and we consummated the marriage joylessly.

 

I conceived our son three years later, though not for lack of trying, and we named him Hamlet, after his father. I had not wanted to, not liking the meaning of his name. My own was meaningful, and I had hoped to give to my son a name that would give him strength in troubled times, but alas, my husband named him, and I pray we will not regret giving him a name that carries only trouble.

 

My relationship with my husband was one of strong friendship at this point. I think we had long accepted that there would be no love between us, but admiration could and did grow there, and our bed romps became enjoyable, as did our time spent together. We basked in the company of our young son, and when our friend and advisor Polonius and his lovely wife bore their first child, we rejoiced for them, and their son and our son became inseparable.

 

Life continued smoothly for us. Hamlet’s father stepped down, and Hamlet was elected into the monarchy easily. The people and nobles alike loved him. He looked like a king, with his wavy brown hair and easy smile, and his personality matched. He was charming and young and energetic, and under him the state of Denmark thrived.

* * *

 

Claudius at this time was expanding our territories in the East. Rumor said that he had never taken a lover, or equally, that he had slept with many men.

I never believed those rumors.

* * *

  
  


I bore two other children in the time between young Hamlet, whom I had taken to calling _Linfred_ , peaceful and calm, my attempt to cancel out the evil of his name, and the second child of Polonius and his wife.

Both those children did not live outside the womb, and Polonius’s second child was close to death herself, having been born in a rush of blood that had killed her mother.

 

For the funeral of Polonius’s wife, Claudius came home, and was gone again the next day.

 

I nursed that girl myself, with the milk that should have gone to my children, and she grew strong. We named her Ophelia, for she had needed help in the early stages of her life. It was a fine Greek name, from a poem her mother had loved, and she grew pretty and tall soon enough.

 

My son was quickly approaching manhood, and at sixteen, he and Laertes, the child of Polonius, left to be schooled at a university in Wittenberg. It was hard to see my baby leave, my little Linfred, but he was anxious and ready to go. He would do well there, I knew, but with a mother’s heavy heart I watched him board the ship, joking with his friend, glimpses of the man he would become shining through.

 

I took on instruction of Ophelia at this time. She was ten and resembled her mother in face and temperament, and I felt that she and my son might make a good match, God willing, in time.

 

Letters from Linfred were scarce, as could be expected of a young man. I realized, too, that I was no longer a young woman. I was thirty-six, and my hips and thighs betrayed me, as did my hair. Once a glorious thick auburn, it was thinner now, and there was gray beginning to blossom at my temples.

The next five years passed in a blur of domesticity and letters to and from Wittenberg, where Hamlet had, I determined, taken up with a young man named Horatio. He did not say so outright, but I felt the fondness in his letters whenever he mentioned him.

 

I remembered my own fondnesses of my youth, for Polonius, and later, for Claudius, and I wished my son well. 

 

This is the account of the first forty-one years of my life as Lady and Queen. These were peaceful, good years, and my husband and I entered into our middle-age secure.

* * *

 

  
  
Then Claudius came home.

 

 


End file.
